Linux is enterprise ready

Meta Group and Bloor Research have recently reclassified Linux, with the former upgrading Linux’s status to ‘early adopter’ from ‘bleeding edge,’ and the latter announcing that the OS is enterprise ready.

Linux’s detractors have frequently claimed that the open source operating system is more suitable for hobbyists and home users than big business. This has certainly been the case in the Middle East, where the uptake of Linux has been scarce and most users have either opted for Unix or Windows.

Furthermore, such thoughts have often been supported by the analyst community, which has at times argued that the OS lacks the support and consolidation capabilities necessary for an enterprise class operating system.

However, it appears as though the tide has turned. Both Meta Group and Bloor Research have recently reclassified the operating system, with the former upgrading Linux’s status to ‘early adopter’ from ‘bleeding edge,’ and the latter announcing that the OS is enterprise ready.

Bloor’s change of heart — it claimed the OS was unsuitable for use in the enterprise three years ago — has come after the analyst house reassessed Linux’s big business credentials. For example, when it comes to scalability, the analyst house now observes that the OS can already scale vertically to 6-way SMP on Intel hardware and within the next three months it will be capable of 8-way scaling.

“Linux now scales well on Intel hardware, and by taking advantage of failover extensions from Linux distributors and Grid suppliers, high availability can be achieved,” says Bloor Research’s Joe Clabby.

Another boon for the open source OS is its flexibility in terms of the hardware it can run on. “Linux has been highly successful in achieving its flexibility goals — running on small, mobile hardware chipsets such as ARM… popular but somewhat obscure chipsets such as Saturn; all the way through powerful, enterprise server chips such as HP’s Alpha, IBM’s PowerPC series and Intel’s Pentium and Itanium series,” explains Clabby.